


photographs (stripped)

by sunflower_8



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Arguing, Complicated Relationships, Domestic, Financial Issues, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Literary References & Allusions, Mental Instability, Metaphors, Multi, Nonlinear Narration, Photography, Sort Of, Suicidal Thoughts, Sunflower's Character Arc: In Which This Pacing Is Intentionally Fucked Up, Unreliable Narrator, Unresolved Emotional Tension, minor mentions of dr3 events, vent fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-26
Updated: 2020-06-26
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:00:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24934927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunflower_8/pseuds/sunflower_8
Summary: he thinks, then, that it takes seven days to develop a photograph with his disposable camera he got on his fifteenth birthday, and when they first meet,their time begins to count down.(or, an unconventionally-told narrative of hinata's relationship with nanami and komaeda, from its origins to its ends, as well as the complex spaces between)
Relationships: Hinata Hajime/Komaeda Nagito/Nanami Chiaki
Comments: 29
Kudos: 42





	photographs (stripped)

her lips are the color of peaches, her words spilling onto the pavement like strawberry milkshakes at 5 am on a saturday, kissing in the corner of a diner or outside an early-evening bar. her hair, too, is the hue of sunrises, the rosy softness of the day when you first crack open the window, a slightly chilly breeze but blankets, too, to wrap around you. in the arms of someone, she is warm, a quiet security of the start of spring, and her fingertips flutter around the neck of her embracer, a touch like gossamer that paints the lavender skies with the blessing of someone helplessly in love, and her touch is the whisper of a thousand fae saying  _ we died too soon. _

(he thinks, then, that it takes seven days to develop a photograph with his disposable camera he got on his fifteenth birthday, and when they first meet,

their time begins to count down.)

\--

a prologue might be necessary.

here’s this: they meet in april.

it’s raining and his slightly wrinkled school uniform is getting drenched, but he can’t work up the courage to walk inside, not when he’s like  _ this _ . and his hands are trembling at his sides, though he’s not really sure  _ why.  _ maybe gritting his teeth and tensing his arms as his fists lay against his sides is maybe the cause for the shiver that runs through him, even though the rain of april is always helplessly  _ warm.  _

but, what matters is this: it’s april, and he sits on the edge of a fountain and runs his index finger in the clear water. part of him thinks he’s dirtying it, really, but all rain could just be acid rain so maybe he needs to be less anxious. though, that’s a tall order, since he carries burdens on his shoulder like atlas and he never quite liked mythology, but he thinks that maybe there’s some kind of humanity in the titans other than prometheus, but sometimes he feels as if he  _ is  _ being eaten away by vultures, and that vultures look like artificial smiles, and

haha, well. that’s at  _ least  _ the second act of  _ this  _ story.

what matters is this: a boy sits at a fountain, and a girl approaches him. well, no,  _ approach  _ is the wrong word; rather, she walks to where he is sitting and joins him without a word. he stares at her, slightly incredulous, and his eyes trail over to where the device in her hand-- one he had yet to notice-- boots up some kind of game. and it’s a bit old school, he thinks, but he’s not really  _ great  _ at video games (unless all the times he’s derealized counts, and, in that case… well) so he can’t exactly approximate the times. but he does say a quiet, “hey,” and after a few seconds she replies, and a slow, almost sluggish conversation starts there.

but does the pace really matter? what matters is  _ this _ : the two of them speak, and then they part, and the next day,  _ they come back. _

except, well-- the seventh time she comes, someone is following her. 

\--

here’s the thing, he isn’t really  _ good  _ at photography.

he knows a photographer (a friend of an acquaintance, an enemy of an acquaintance, an idol to a student body-- does it really matter? pictures are not  _ language _ ) who can spend hours talking about the angle you hold the camera, how to click it at just the right time, how to get the lighting just  _ perfect _ , how every picture is  _ precious.  _

and he joins a photography club the same way he joins other clubs-- he goes for the first day and then sticks his hands in his pockets and kicks the tile of an empty hallway that echoes with the sound of custodians and lurking students, and with a small huff he decides  _ this must just not be my thing.  _

but when he meets her, he starts to think that there’s some kind of art in photography. 

because here’s the really cool thing about pictures: they keep a memory preserved forever, and, until you lose that photograph, that memory will  _ always  _ exist. that single, single moment in time will never  _ die _ , really, because it takes a bit for ink to smear or fade completely, and he can always shove them all into a time capsule and hope that the imprints that still remain tell the story. because really, there’s a story to be  _ told _ , always. 

(later, he notes that sometimes, the story is a story nobody wants to tell, scribbled out of textbooks above the bodies of historians, and a memory is not always worth remembering, and he closes his eyes tightly to pretend it never existed.

but it does. because it’s in a photograph, and it’ll never die. 

or maybe, he thinks as he kneels in the ashes of  _ burning the evidence _ , a memory someone on campus must have wanted to forget, maybe they died too soon.)

\--

so, he doesn’t typically dislike people. 

but there’s something  _ wrong  _ with this lucky student.

this lucky student, who gives a forced smile and waves even though he’s right in front of him. this lucky student, who says his name is  _ komaeda nagito _ with some kind of spite in his voice. this lucky student, who praises the girl in the span of two seconds. this lucky student, who self deprecates even quicker. this lucky student, who in the same breath insults him.  _ him _ , being  _ him,  _

and he says his name is  _ hinata hajime  _ with some kind of shame in his voice. 

(but, really, do names  _ mean anything  _ here? there’s a girl, this lucky student, and a reserve. that’s the set, the dynamic, the ideal team, the girl might say. there’s nothing really  _ ideal,  _ here. 

maybe if you took the beauty of the girl, the intellect of this lucky student, and the empathy of the reserve, you would get some kind of person. someone functional. someone almost robotic, and later, later he will think about AIs.)

when he meets this lucky student, it’s still april, but one of his first  _ normal  _ words is something cryptic about winter not really being over. and the reserve looks over at where this lucky student is staring-- which is the sky that’s almost setting-- and his eyes end up drifting to the person himself, and what he sees is,

well, he sees winter.

(later, he revises this too. and he says later,  _ he sees decaying autumn,  _ but they aren’t really there yet. he doesn’t know much about decay, yet. because he is growing, and the girl is growing, and this lucky student is all stagnation.)

\--

something changes in july. 

well, a lot of things change in july. so, here’s a synopsis.

the girl is flirted with, leans against the reserve’s arm and ignores the way he blushes in favor of the fluorescent screen, and later she confesses to him bluntly, asks him out on a date, and he couldn’t say yes with any  _ more  _ enthusiasm. a date becomes two, then three, then four, then he notices that this lucky student has disappeared from their lives. so, he hunts him down, finds out that he’s been doing  _ something,  _ something he says is  _ re-reading othello  _ but the reserve doesn’t know if that’s really true. soon, this lucky student joins them again with even more artificial grins, saying something like  _ my work is complete _ ,

and the girl grabs his hand. 

and in a couple of weeks, she suggests  _ maybe the three of us, together,  _ and this lucky student doesn’t seem enthusiastic so the reserve almost wants to call it off, but then he doesn’t, and he’s not really sure  _ why  _ he doesn’t, because this lucky student doesn’t look happy despite the way his grey eyes light up,

__ but this isn’t the synopsis, right? 

so, here’s what happens: three people hold hands, three people go to the fountain, three people kiss. two player games become a debate of who spectates, and this lucky student always offers himself, and it becomes this messy kind of relationship that none of them have really  _ had.  _ but it works. the main idea of this part of their life is that  _ it works, and they never thought it wouldn’t _ . except, here’s a secret: 

nobody goes through weeks of sleep deprivation to annotate othello for no  _ reason.  _ nobody fiddles with a disposable camera every day, too scared to take a shot of themselves in the mirror but too scared to let that memory slip. nobody is so caught up in video games and sleep that they can count on their right hand how many times they’ve existed in the past year. 

so, yes. it works, but it doesn’t really  _ work. _

\--

his eyes are desaturated mercury, or maybe a stormy sky that makes you sob as it roars outside your window, but the lights in the hospital room are dim enough, now, that you feel safe screaming there. his limbs are the secrets of shakespeare’s skeleton, and the inner crook of his left elbow has every line of prose hamlet says to horatio written in disposable camera ink. and his hair curls around his ear and nape in a way that should be appealing, really,  _ sweet prince, _ but sometimes it falls out onto the bathroom floor like fallen angels from the orbit of jupiter and he just tips his head back with a bottle of pills and laughs  _ ha, ha, ha  _ as they fall down. and his lips? well, they’re chapped and icy and he begins to look like the end of autumn, like decay, and  _ hey, why are the tips of his hair auburn?  _ oh, and his fingertips don’t tap, because they are stained in blue ink that he used to annotate macbeth, today. 

(it takes seven days to develop a photo with his disposable camera that he got when he was fifteen, but he’s too wrapped up in yarn from the unraveling scarf that the lovecraftian, breathing corpse bought him-- and the idea is, he never takes a photo of the scarf, and he wonders if he should have, maybe.)

\--

so, there’s going to be a bit of a timeskip,

because who really cares about the  _ spaces,  _ here?

this is what happens: two of them graduate. the third doesn’t because he set a building on fire and bought a train ticket to a far away city, and he only came back when his lovers pleaded over a payphone because they were too scared to use their phone for that kind of thing. but in any case, the first two do, and one of them gets a job as a video game developer, and the other starts taking pictures that aren’t as good as the other graduates that year, but he hangs them up on the fridge on this black string of fairy lights,

and two long, lanky arms wrap around his neck as a whisper trinkles from the sky, saying,  _ they are as beautiful as you, hinata-kun _ , and they kiss and kiss and kiss and-

well, you don’t care about  _ that,  _ do you?

they don’t have a family, but they have a house and they have dysfunction, and two of them agree that this is the same. oh, and there are these yellow post-it notes that all of them take to placing, and they don’t say much of anything for meaning, except  _ what do i get at the store on tuesday  _ or maybe  _ i love you two <3,  _ if that matters. oh, oh, and there is this one, one time, that says  _ i’m sorry _ , and they restrict the usage of train tickets, then. 

they live in a house and  _ oh!  _ there’s a garden. they build a garden and it mainly has tiny things like mint or parsley, but they work on growing it, growing it until every window shows a few crops that remind them that they are  _ growing,  _ and it’s such a weird sentiment, isn’t it? that they get so many flowers but not a single fountain? they can hardly  _ stomach  _ the bird bath.

but, oh, that’s all. this is what they spend a few years doing. this is them. 

so, what else?

\--

so, one day, he’s washing the dishes. 

(oh, no need to be coy about names. 

here’s a revision: komaeda’s washing the dishes.)

so, komaeda’s washing the dishes, and he hears nanami and hinata in the living room, talking softly like they always do at seven pm, and they haven’t had dinner yet but komaeda’s washing the dishes because he thinks they are ordering out, but he isn’t really  _ sure,  _ and-

oh, this is all wrong. 

here’s a revision: komaeda’s washing the dishes, and nanami and hinata hear him from the living room, talking softly like they always do at seven pm, and they haven’t had dinner but hinata thinks they are ordering out, so komaeda’s going ahead and washing the dishes, but hinata isn’t really  _ sure _ , and he hears a sudden crash from the kitchen, followed by the faucet turning off.

so, instead of moving, he calls out, “hey, ko, you okay?” and nanami hums sleepily against him. 

and from the kitchen, he hears the faucet turn back on and a cheerful voice say, “of course, haha!” 

and, funny thing, it is-- they say they’re going to get takeout, but hinata hears komaeda turn on the stove anyway, and then turn it  _ off _ , and when he goes there later, it’s almost like it didn’t happen. komaeda stammers something like  _ oh, i’m so stupid, i hit it with my elbow, haha!  _ as he keeps his hands behind his back and stands up on his tip-toes before falling back down, again. and hinata just grins, wraps him up in a hug, and komaeda startles like he always did two years ago, but they’re growing people, so it doesn’t really  _ matter _ .

it’s so funny, really, because it  _ doesn’t really matter,  _ but komaeda and hinata fight about it a day later.

\--

when nanami finishes her debut game, they go to the arcade. 

komaeda watches nanami play 8-bit games with a bright eagerness, and hinata gets them all bags of chips (baked blue tortilla chips, classic lays chips, and spicy jalapeno chips-- if you can distinguish who got what, that is). komaeda thanks him, kisses his cheek, and he still blushes as he leans against the machine and watches nanami play the game. at some point, komaeda gets distracted while talking to the owner of the arcade, so he doesn’t see nanami beat the game. he sulks about this for entirely too long, so hinata gets them all some soda (citrus sprite, cream root beer, and cherry cola) and he cheers up, a bit.

he doesn’t kiss hinata’s cheek again, though.

they leave the arcade, and nanami smiles softly when she sees how well the game is doing, but she gets even brighter at the reviews that say  _ this changed my life.  _ and beside her, komaeda says that they changed his life, and hinata notes that he doesn’t sound very happy but he forgets to ask him later. by the time they get home, they’re all tired and fall asleep quickly, except hinata wakes up three hours from a weird dream and he gets out of bed, wearing a mismatched pair of some of komaeda’s socks as he goes to the garden and sees a gladiolus flower blooming again, and he takes a picture of it.

\--

oh, by the way.

it wasn’t a big fight. when they fought after komaeda turned on the stove, that is. it wasn’t even really a  _ fight _ , it was just… a disagreement. but some might call it a fight, really, with the huff komaeda let out and the glare hinata sent and the raise of nanami’s voice when she found out. 

here’s the thing, the fight wasn’t about anything  _ important.  _ it wasn’t about the stove, or the takeout, or the broken plate (because did komaeda really think he could hide that forever?) or the burn mark (oh, but komaeda  _ did  _ hide that one forever, so ignore it). it was actually pretty simple, simple enough that the sparks of an argument started.

what happened was this: hinata asked to take a photo of komaeda on the disposable camera he got when he was fifteen. and komaeda asked _why_.

\--

going to sleep is always better with all three of them.

hinata prefers being  _ too warm  _ to being  _ too cold _ , he always has, but thankfully komaeda is just chilly enough and nanami is just warm enough for it to equalize. he usually ends up with nanami’s head against his chest, her arms wrapped around his waist, and komaeda’s temple presses against his as he cradles hinata’s neck with the crook of his elbow resting just against his pulse. and it’s  _ safe _ , there, and it’s  _ familiar _ even on the days that they change up positions.

but, well, he starts to notice a pattern. and, okay, he’s never  _ liked  _ math-- nanami is the one interested in patterns, though only when it’s computer science, and komaeda has always been an academic all around-- but he  _ does  _ sense a trend. linear or not, he isn’t sure. but this is what he deduces without the help of a graphing calculator:

with every passing day, the three people in one bed slowly become two. one, sometimes, and then it picks up, and then three fall asleep together but two wake up together. and it becomes this  _ thing  _ where he almost tries to guess which one of them will be gone by the morning. 

(he wants to pretend like he isn’t guilty, but the odds  _ are  _ 30%)

\--

nanami quits developing games to stream, instead. 

hinata sees it coming. after being with his partners for five total years, he’s not at all shocked. honestly, he thought this would happen  _ earlier.  _ so, when he tells her, he just kisses her forehead and asks her  _ do you want onions on your sandwich?  _

komaeda takes it differently. 

komaeda smiles brightly when he first finds out, gives her a cheerful pick-me-up even though she never  _ needed  _ to be-picked-up, and he doesn’t say a word of it later. when hinata asks, he says that he doesn’t feel like eating a sandwich, but that the tomatoes he grew are ripe if needed. they bicker about it, but eventually komaeda concedes to the argument, takes two bites of the meal, and goes upstairs with the leftovers in the trash.

that night, hinata wakes up to see komaeda gone. he just closes his eyes and tries to fall back asleep. he wakes up again, because he sleeps  _ better  _ with all of them there, and komaeda is back then. except, his eyes are red and he’s already faking a smile before hinata’s eyes even flutter open. 

quietly, hinata inquires, “what happened?” in the lowlight of one am,

and komaeda turns away, looks at the ceiling, and grins. 

“ko, what happened? is everything okay?”

“nanami-san quit her job,” and normally, he’d chide him about using honorifics even though they’ve been together forever, but right now, he’s more worried about  _ everything else _ . “and… isn’t that the most beautiful thing? it’s truly the most hopeful thing she could ever do.”

“you’re mad,” hinata passively observes.

komaeda shrugs, presses the crook of his elbow against hinata’s pulse and lays his temple near the other’s, closing his grey eyes fast enough that hinata almost can’t see the fear in them.  _ almost _ . “i’m not mad, hinata-kun,” he says in a voice suddenly exhausted. “i’m  _ ecstatic _ .”

hinata falls asleep pretty quickly after that,

and wakes up to nanami shaking him, her eyes wide, and her lips are frozen in the words  _ where is komaeda _ ?

\--

komaeda always liked to run away.

well, he doesn’t get very far. his feet are tentatively planted on a bridge, his eyes peering at the water like chrysalis, when he suddenly feels two arms wrap around him and pull him over the railing. he turns to see hinata, heaving breaths from the exertion, and nanami, pouting and crossing her arms. they’re mad, if the look in their eyes is any indication, but they also look so  _ concerned _ .

really, could anybody blame komaeda for laughing as he says, “i wasn’t going to kill myself.”

nanami softens in a way that makes him laugh harder, and soon both his lovers have their arms tight around him. hinata speaks first, and he almost sounds  _ heartbroken  _ when he asks, “what happened?” komaeda shrugs, tries to bury his face closer, and they allow the second to pass but not the first. hinata presses harder, almost sounding irritated-- or, no, maybe just  _ desperate _ \-- as he says, “nagito, please, what  _ happened _ ?”

komaeda giggles. “isn’t it so picturesque, hinata-kun?” he asks. he escapes their grip, enough to turn his head and look at the water. hinata buries his nails in his shoulders when he adds, “you should take a photograph!”

nanami hums quizzically, glances at hinata, and the brunet just shakes his head before turning back to komaeda. “please stop running away from home,” he pleads. 

“i did leave a note, hinata-kun,” komaeda informs. 

“where?” nanami asks this time, resting her hand on hinata’s arm as if he will crumble if she doesn’t. it’s really funny, how obviously oblivious they are. 

he smiles wider. “i wonder.”

(the rest of this conversation is painfully boring, so here is how this goes: komaeda complies to go home and never leave the house alone again for a month before his partners even suggest this plan. they offer to get him a therapist, and then they  _ insist _ , but after komaeda skips the first seven visits they give up. komaeda doesn’t really get better, but hinata takes countless photographs of their growing plants and leaves it at the coffee table when komaeda’s asleep,

and, oh yeah. komaeda starts sleeping on the couch. nobody asks him to. in the start, hinata is so against it that he picks him up and carries him to the queen bed. but eventually, he’s too tired to do it every day, so they just let it happen.

and, well. the rest of the conversation isn’t that important, see? because this illustrates the thesis behind their relationship:  _ the photographs taken by a disposable camera cannot grow any further than the ink allows. _

oh, and another thing:

_ they died too soon. _ )

\--

they get married a year later.

hinata proposes a lot earlier. they’re on a date, and nanami is feeding some ducks while komaeda watches, and he closes his eyes for a second and when he opens them, hinata is proposing with a ring box in each hand, fumbling over his speech clumsily. nanami’s eyes water, and she says yes. komaeda’s smile widens, and he says yes. hinata’s hands shake, and he says, “thank fuck.” and they all hug and kiss, decide on a more private wedding, and-

haha, this is the best part.

this time,  _ komaeda  _ suggests they take the photograph.

(because, well, here’s a secret: komaeda knew hinata was going to propose. he didn’t know  _ that  _ early on, really, but he did know before nanami did. because, well, here’s a retelling, one a bit more suitable to the three of them:

hinata proposes a lot earlier. they’re on a date, and nanami is feeding some ducks while komaeda watches, and then he hears something. he hears a knee against the floor, he hears static, he hears nanami giggle, he hears hinata try to open two ring boxes in each hand. he closes his eyes for a second, hoping that when he opens them, he will be alone on a bridge again with burn scars on his palms. 

and, well. you know what happens when he opens his eyes.)

\--

a month later, komaeda loses the ring. nobody ever finds out if it was on purpose or not, but hinata gets pissed in the moment. and komaeda cries on their doorstep for a few hours, not because of the ring, no, he doesn’t regret it. rather, he cries because he is unemployed. and hinata is not high on the work ladder. and nanami is on hiatus from streaming,

and, well. komaeda thinks that rings cost a bit, is all.

… oh, is the financial point too sudden?

well, consider this. hinata got a disposable camera because his parents couldn’t afford any other kind and his old phone hardly had any storage and they missed his birthday for three years in a row and how he got into the reserve course is a mystery-- no, a  _ scam _ . nanami cried at her first ps4 because she was always missing that  _ one  _ console that hardly sold cheap and it doesn’t matter, really, not to her, but it meant  _ so much  _ that she could finally  _ have it _ . and komaeda?

well,

don’t you know?

\--

hinata starts to think about AIs, by the way.

he has a dream one night. komaeda is on the couch and nanami is streaming, and he has a dream that his lovers become code. he never really understood the stuff nanami used to type, never understood why java had to speak an entirely different language. he likes photos, not words. or, well-- he  _ understands  _ photos, not words. in any case, his lovers become code,

and here’s what sends chills down his spine: he doesn’t even care, in the morning after.

_ import java.util.Scanner; _

_ public class Nightmare _

_ { _

_ public static void main(String args[]) _

_ { _

_ String wakeup; _

_ Scanner please = new Scanner(System.in); _

__

_ System.out.print("What will you accomplish from this? "); _

_ wakeup = please.nextLine(); _

__

_ System.out.print("Give up, " + wakeup); _

_ } _

_ } _

\--

hinata reads komaeda’s copy of othello, one day.

it’s hard to read through the scribbles. it’s so messy-- komaeda has  _ horrid  _ handwriting-- and half the points don’t make any sense. but for some reason, the sight of the smeared ink is enough for hinata’s eyes to water, and komaeda enters the bedroom to see hinata crying over a copy of othello. of course, he hugs him, apologizes, asks what’s wrong, but hinata waves it off. and komaeda  _ lets him _ .

because, well, othello isn’t komaeda’s favorite shakespearean story. it doesn’t even mean a lot to him, from what hinata has been told. but, komaeda says as he kisses hinata’s tears away, reading the notes for macbeth or romeo and juliet or hamlet would  _ kill  _ hinata.

(and, well, you know what will be said here, right?)

\--

nanami dies first, by the way.

oh, well. that’s a bit too much, isn’t it?

forget about it. just know that when she dies, it is in april, and it’s a week away from their seventh anniversary of meeting. this is the closest to a conclusion you may perceive. but, they press on like the garden they have, one that dies that april, oddly enough.

\--

one day, they have a day.

nanami’s head rests against hinata’s shoulder as she sleepily plays mario kart, and she only stops when hinata tells her that she should catch up on some rest. she does, a light presence on his shoulder, and the sound of the video game soothes him from the stresses of daily life. with his free hand, he beckons komaeda over, wanting to be surrounded by his lovers again.

komaeda kneels at his side, and hinata is too tired to ask why. instead, he mumbles, “kiss me,” and his boyfriend obliges him. each kiss grows shorter, and soon it’s hardly a kiss at all, and hinata feels something shift in him. he furrows his eyebrows, brushes komaeda’s hair away from his eyes, and asks, “what’s wrong?”

“nothing,” komaeda lies.

he doesn’t press. 

(but, just before hinata’s sleep takes him, he hears komaeda whisper,  _ we died too soon _ , and he doesn’t say a word,

because what can he say to that?)

\--

so, yes. it works, but it doesn’t really  _ work. _

do you understand, now, why the artificial smiles had to come in act two? or why it is  _ always  _ hinata? cameras typically overexpose one figure. the reserve has  _ always  _ been better with cameras than the girl or this lucky student. he doesn’t understand this, because he doesn’t understand anything.

oh, except one thing. but you’ve already figured that out, haven’t you?

let’s set another scene: a hypothetical, rather. it’s summer, komaeda weaves flower crowns of forget-me-nots and daisies into nanami’s hair, and hinata lays against a tree trunk in a sleepy daze. later, they start walking home when they see a forest, and nanami suggests they explore it. they find a tree trunk, split open instead, and a toad watches them amidst the dirt. and from the corner of hinata’s eye, he sees komaeda petting a fox with nine tails and nanami talking to the fae. 

what is the significance of this?

let’s set another scene: a hypothetical, rather. it’s autumn, hinata warms komaeda’s hands in his, and nanami is drinking hot cocoa in a cafe. they share kisses that taste like whipped cream and cinnamon, and they walk home in streets that feel happily familiar. on the way, komaeda picks up a golden leaf and holds it to the sun, whispering something about luck. and from the corner of hinata’s eye, he sees a desaturated komaeda and an exasperated nanami.

well, are we not all completionists?

let’s set another scene: a hypothetical, rather. it’s winter, nanami sits by the fireplace with sweater paws while hinata reads a book, and komaeda is lighting vanilla candles with a match. they sleep in the living room in a pile of warmth, and they wake up with sore necks but endless affection for each other. on the way to the bedroom, nanami notices that a candle isn’t lit up. and from the corner of hinata’s eye, he sees his lovers set aflame.

you’re so close, aren’t you?

let’s set another scene: a hypothetical, rather. it’s spring, and all of them are dead.

_ finally.  _

\--

_ we died too soon _ .

-caption on photograph #7, taken by photographer hinata hajime. critics state that, for this piece, he used a disposable camera. this is the last photograph taken on this specific camera, though there is no additional comment on this, as hinata hajime died shortly after publishing a collection of his photographs from unknown causes.

**Author's Note:**

> so. this fic was more experimental than, like, designed to be conclusive? i was more going for a... vibe, if that makes sense. rather than a descriptive plot? which is why a lot of this is nondescript, kind of. the unsettling, off-kilter nature of this was intentional. but it was also part vent, part kind of... hm. let's just say a lot of the decisions here were made for a reason. sorry if that made for a... unsatisfying read?
> 
> anyway. i really do hope you like it!
> 
> i like this kind of stuff. this kind of... weirdly told narratives? i'm sorry, yet again, if this seems more centric on komahina than hinanami aspects. i honestly didn't think it really was, but. constantly on the watch for that. so sorry if i did that, or vise versa! the komanami stuff is... always kind of little, considering i don't ship that specific duo as much as the rest of this. but it isn't null. which is good.
> 
> i have taken a full-year coding course in java and am taking another full course in my next school year, and yet i still had to research for some code for that little bit.
> 
> uhm, i think that's all i had to say? please let me know what you think of this kind of style, since i might pursue it? okay, that's all! i hope this doesn't suck
> 
> edit: oh im a stupid motherfucker this is also for komahinanami week, free day, i know i said that i waws only doing one prompt for this week but yesterday i got inspo so, yeah that's where we at, sorry for forgetting this alkdsfj


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